Sunday, March 5, 2017

Mosul Campaign Day 138-39, Mar 3-4, 2017

Wadi Hajar is the newest neighborhood freed by the Iraqi forces (Institute for the Study of War)

The Iraqi forces were still fighting over the initial areas
of southeast Mosul. After several days of tough fighting the Golden Division
finally freed the Wadi
Hajar neighborhood on March 3 directly north of the Ghazlani Camp. The unit
was then moving east towards the Tigris River to connect with the police units
there. Dawas
was still contested after it was unofficially declared liberated on February
28, and so was Mansour.
On March
4 operations had to be halted because of bad weather and rain. The Islamic
State took advantage of the poor conditions to launch a series of
counterattacks. The insurgents are also using more suicide bombers.
One army officer said there were at least 10 per day. Like east Mosul the going
has been hard. Despite all the Iraqi propaganda that IS is a defeated force it
is putting up a stiff defense. The question as always is how long can it
sustain it before it breaks.

Several and Hashd divisions are moving on southwest Mosul.
The town of Damerji was taken on February
28, but it was not declared completely cleared until March
3. This is all rural areas, which IS traditionally does not to depend
because they lack the manpower, are out in the open, and would be exposed to
air strikes. Around Badush however the insurgents have dug tunnels
into the mountains. These Iraqi forces have two jobs. One is to cut off routes
to the west of Mosul, and the other is to open another front once it reaches
the city.

Farther to the west the future of Tal Afar is still up in
the air. A Hashd spokesman blamed
Prime Minister Haider Abadi for delaying the attack on the village. He claimed
that there was pressure from local politicians as well as regional powers to
stop the Hashd from seizing the town. Originally, the Hashd were going to seize
the town, then Turkey complained so vociferously that Baghdad agreed to have
the army and police liberate Tal Afar. That never happened, so National
Security Adviser Falah Fayad stated that the Hashd would be given the job. That
was reversed again. This back and forth is caused by a number of reasons.
First, the pro-Iran Hashd groups want to free the town because there are many
Shiite Turkmen there and also because it would control the routes to Syria and
given its patrons in Tehran a direct land route across Iraq to Syria. Second,
Turkey does not want that to happen to block Iran’s advances and because it
sees itself as the protector of Iraq’s Turkmen. Third, Ninewa politicians do
not want the Hashd to have a presence in the province either.

The Islamic State used chemical weapons while shelling east
Mosul. According
to doctors from the International Red Cross 12 people were injured in this
attack, and said that it looked like a blister agent was used. Previously, on March
1 suspected chlorine shells were used in another mortar attack on the
eastern section of the city. IS has been known to work on chemical weapons
before, and alleged stocks and laboratories have been captured in the past. It
has also deployed chlorine before, but this appeared to be a far more dangerous
agent.

Civilians remain the major victims in east Mosul. The
Islamic State executed 9 people on March
3 and 7 families on March 4. IS has
been killing people on charges of cooperating with the government and for
having phones. Iraqi artillery
has also been blamed
for 12 fatalities and 4 injured.

The new Mosul campaign has set off a huge wave of
displacement. The Interior Ministry had 14,000 fleeing the city on March
3 alone. That same day the Norwegian Refugee Council reported
that 30,708 people had left west Mosul since February 19 with most of those
coming in the last week. Most of these displaced are going to camps south of
Mosul, but those are just about at capacity, so people are now being bused to
Kurdistan. The Hamam al-Alil camp for example is running short of water and
other services. The Displacement Ministry issued a statement
criticizing the United Nations for failing to meet these people’s needs.
Baghdad didn’t have the money or capacity to deal with this issue either, which
was why the government asked people to stay in Mosul. The intensity of the
fighting and the severe shortages in west Mosul are reasons why so many people
are exiting compared to the eastern half.

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About Me

Musings On Iraq was started in 2008 to explain the political, economic, security and cultural situation in Iraq via original articles and interviews. I have written for the Jamestown Foundation, Tom Ricks’ Best Defense at Foreign Policy and the Daily Beast, and was responsible for a chapter in the book Volatile Landscape: Iraq And Its Insurgent Movements. My work has been published in Iraq via NRT, AK News, Al-Mada, Sotaliraq, All Iraq News, and Ur News all in Iraq. I was interviewed on BBC Radio 5, Radio Sputnik, CCTV and TRT World News TV, and have appeared in CNN, the Christian Science Monitor, The National, Columbia Journalism Review, Mother Jones, PBS’ Frontline, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Institute for the Study of War, Radio Free Iraq, Rudaw, and others. I have also been cited in Iraq From war To A New Authoritarianism by Toby Dodge, Imagining the Nation Nationalism, Sectarianism and Socio-Political Conflict in Iraq by Harith al-Qarawee, ISIS Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassahn, The Rise of the Islamic State by Patrick Cocburn, and others. If you wish to contact me personally my email is: motown67@aol.com